USMarketView

June 13, 2008

Prices, up early, retained their momentum as the NASDAQ gained 2.09 percent,

the S&P500 rose 1.5 percent and the DJIA moved higher by 1.36 percent. These

strong increases, however, were not enough to offset Wednesday’s losses, when

each of the indices fell by more than today’s gains.

There have been ten such days –gains or losses exceeding 1.5 percent- in the 29 days since the Fed’s latest rate cut. All told, there have been 34 of these swings since the beginning of the year, 111 trading days ago. That is, in 30.6 percent of closes in 2008.

This is a much larger share than in the past few years, when there were only 17 percent in 2007, 11 percent in 2006, and 6 percent in 2005.

At the end of the 24^th week of the year, all three indices stand below their values on the first Friday of 2008, with the NASDAQ losing -.81 percent and the S&P500 decreasing -.05 percent from a week ago, whereas the DJIA rose .80 percent.

Counting positive and negative weeks, the DJIA leads, with 13 gains and 11 losses; the S&P500 has the exact opposite ratio: 11 gains and 13 losses, while the NASDAQ has only 10 positive weeks, compared to 14 lower closes from the Friday of the week before.

DJIA 1.36 percent

NASDAQ 2.09 percent

S&P500 1.50 percent

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 12 052008000000Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:05:00 +0000 and is filed under Market Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.